Europa Poets' Gazette No 73

When you can’t bear pain anymore, it's time to make the enemy your friend.
Sounds convoluted? Well, for many of us you’d be right. How can we ignore pain - chronic, ongoing?
Physical or mental, the limits are so hard to endure, even more to comprehend how some can live the agony day after day, unrelenting.
Pain won’t leave, like a visitor who’s outstayed their welcome. Pain persists, insidious. The long pain is unimaginable.
There are those among us who deal with pain as a companion. Pain won’t go, so they embrace it, learn to understand it, accept that it will tap the shoulder at any moment.
Pain is as they live. I am humbled by all those who bear it and can still smile.


Step Softly
Step
into the mist,
Let it kiss
your face,
As gossamer lace
on cool glass,
Let dew grass
bathe
in bird-call dawn
when hope is born,
Live the mist,
Feel it kiss
on closed eyes,
As soft veil sighs
’neath forgiving skies,
And lilting breeze
stirs tissue leaves,
This mist caressed,
By Nature blessed.
© Michael Garrad April 2010